Before he met his son, Eddie Hudson wrote him a song. Now he is learning how to keep its promises between gigs, feedings, and the next day’s work.
By Walter Hargrave
Around one in the morning, after the gig and the drive home, Eddie Hudson still had bottles to wash. His son had woken him at three the previous morning. Between the two came feedings, daycare, emails, a session producing another musician, mixing, and a show that took about two and a half hours to set up. He brings more equipment than he probably should. By 2:30, he was in bed.
That Wednesday, described in his written answers to Indie Music Bus, is the life Hudson was trying to imagine when he wrote College Fund. Before his son arrived, the artist known as Hudsy worried that fatherhood might mean giving up music. He wanted to tell his child to follow his dreams and be able to mean it because he was still following his own.
In his home studio, he began with a recording on his phone: the first time he and his wife heard their son’s prenatal heartbeat. He chose a key, listened, and started writing a letter to someone he had yet to meet. He wanted to introduce himself, and to believe what he was saying about being a musician and a good dad.
Hudson says the heartbeat opens the finished song and continues throughout. He adjusted its timing to the tempo; later it aligns with the kick drum and becomes less prominent. “I love that he’s part of the recording forever. It’s like a tattoo, but cooler.”
Now he sings his son to sleep most nights. “Before he was here, I was imagining that connection. Now I’m actually holding the little guy I wrote it for.”
Making the hours count
Once his son is at daycare, Hudson gets straight into bookings, mixing, and writing. On gig days he misses pickup. Sundays have become more precious, but he rarely turns down a show. The work pays for their home in Anna, Texas, the food, and what his son needs. He hopes that as more people come to hear him, he will eventually have more say over his schedule. He is clear that he has not reached that point yet.
“It turns out having a baby doesn’t give you more hours in the day. Bit of a design flaw, really.”
Sleep had been his other worry. Hudson has multiple sclerosis and says he is fortunate to have no symptoms at the time of his answers. Losing sleep concerned him. He was surprised by how much happiness his son could bring him while he was still exhausted. At home, he wants to be there for bedtime and the middle-of-the-night feedings. When a show takes him away, he wants his son to know he is thinking about him.
The title College Fund came from the idea of a working dad providing for his children outside conventional hours. Asked about the man he hopes his son will see, Hudson picks accountability as the hardest quality to practice. He is trying to admit mistakes and learn from them without being so cruel to himself that he becomes afraid to acknowledge the next one.
“Being accountable should help you grow, not make you afraid to be honest.”
He thinks of his own father, a hard worker who has kept his sense of humor, then catches the tone of his tribute: “And he is still around, by the way. I keep talking about him like this is a memorial. He’s awesome.”
One day out of a week
There had been a time when Hudson could barely get into a room to write. He and his wife were living somewhere without recording space. A friend lent him a place for a week; he managed to use it for one day. Life kept interrupting, and he admits that sometimes he let stupid distractions get in the way too.
When he finally sat down, he had no idea what to write. Then the frustration came out of his mouth: “I don’t even know who I am anymore. Who the fuck is this guy?” He went with it. Who? grew out of that question, taking him back to being 15 in a basement, strumming a guitar and making loud noises. His parents never came down to tell him to stop. Looking back, he appreciates that.
By the time he wrote College Fund, he had someone new to think about. It became the last song written for Together, We’re Relentless, and the track that closes it. His brother heard room for a bigger chorus, so Hudson went back and worked on it. The EP reached streaming platforms on October 2, 2026, after an earlier Bandcamp release for fans.
The other songs had arrived through their own circumstances. In England, he wrote Daisy about helping someone he loves find a little joy during a difficult time. Seeing a video of Taylor Swift working with Jack Antonoff made him want to be in a room where people were making something exciting together. He turned the feeling into Taylor Swift. “Slightly more productive than just sulking.”
He allows the songs to develop that way, even within the larger three-EP project that began with We Are Joyseekers and continues with Together, We’re Relentless. He says the artwork comes together as a tree; the titles connect too, in a way he wants listeners to discover. His mother has found her way onto separate artwork for a more straightforward reason. She hates swearing, so he named the clean recordings Laverne’s Versions and put her smiling photograph on the cover. It still makes him smile when he sees it.
A show to cover the gas
Texas began as a visit to his mother-in-law. His wife suggested booking a show to pay for the gas. Hudson booked several, they went well, and the couple started coming back roughly every three months. They moved in 2023.
It meant leaving a place that had been good to them. In Evansville, Indiana, they owned a house and he was making a living. He still speaks warmly about the people, but some places were booking less music. On the Texas visits, people kept showing up and more opportunities followed.
“We were supposed to cover the gas. We ended up changing our address.”
He remembers another occasion when his wife persuaded him to try something he was resisting. He was buying equipment when the seller told him his music could use help with mixing and recommended an engineer. Hudson’s response, in his own head, was “Nope. Not doing that.” His wife thought he should call. He did, heard the cost, and thought, “Oh, there’s no way.” She encouraged him again.
He now credits working with that engineer with teaching him more about mixing and making him a better producer and musician. After being on his own for so long, he was learning how much someone else could contribute. Writing with friends over Zoom during the pandemic had helped him become more comfortable with that too.
In his November 2021 interview with Indie Music Discovery, he recalled having six months of fully booked weekends, enough to make his living entirely from music. COVID took those bookings away. He picked up teaching work and reached out to musician friends to keep writing. Working together over video calls gave him a reason to continue when the performances had disappeared.
The songs from those years also follow changes in his family life. Hudson arrived in Evansville in 2019. That September, Great Dark Wonder wrote about My Love, released the previous year for his partner. Personalized songs were helping raise money for their wedding, visa, and move: people contributed, and he spent a day writing for them.
A visa delay disrupted their first wedding plan. They married on February 29, 2020, and Hudson wrote The First Dance about it. Reporting on the song the following month, Great Dark Wonder also described his early-pandemic livestreams, donations from tips, and free online lessons. The wedding had its song, even as the work around it was changing.
The man with the red backpack
The personalized songs had begun on London’s streets, where Hudson wanted to play originals and covers he enjoyed. People passing by had work to get to, someone to meet, or a home to return to. He had to give them a reason to stop.
One day he saw a man with a red backpack and began singing about him in the middle of a song. The man stopped, watched, and put money in the bucket. Hudson had found enough for a chorus without knowing his name.
He tried it again with other people. He says he was very bad at first. Eventually, he could improvise a verse and chorus, change the style, and make it sound like a whole song for the person standing there. People stayed longer. Once they had been part of a song, they were more willing to hear one of his originals.
“That taught me to be a less selfish performer. What am I doing to earn their attention, affection, or respect? They don’t owe me any of it just because I’ve brought a guitar.”
He moved to London in 2015, a year after arriving in England. Going abroad was something he had already been considering when he received his MS diagnosis in 2014. Uncertainty about what he might be able to do in the future made waiting harder to justify. Hudson credits medication as part of his current situation and recognizes that others receiving treatment have harder experiences. He does not take his circumstances for granted.
He wanted to be somewhere with more people and more opportunities. In Canada, he had driven six hours each way in winter for a single show paying around $300. He expected to sleep in his car until someone offered him a floor. There were no other dates around it. He played, slept, and drove home.
In England, teaching helped him obtain his visa. After work he would busk, play open mics, or find another way to perform. He had made the move he wanted, but fitting music around a tiring job still took effort.
Getting to the chorus
An unreleased song called Peter Pan gave Hudson a lesson he still uses. When he played it to Jimmy Messina, Messina picked out an idea near the end and asked why it did not happen more often. It should be the chorus. Hudson took that as a lesson in getting to the part people would want to hear again, while keeping the thought and heart of what he was writing.
His wife still wants him to release Peter Pan. He thinks it might find a place on a future EP. “Apparently even a song called Peter Pan has to grow up eventually.”
Go back to the mostly covers band he played in before Hudsy, and he is equally willing to laugh at himself. It was called Snafu. “We weren’t great. Fair enough, really.” When he began performing as Hudsy with a band in 2006, he was already thinking about how songs joined together and how to make the show flow. He still likes being a little flashy on guitar, while freely admitting he is no virtuoso. He loves playing it.
Growing up in Dauphin, Manitoba, he had heard a teacher say music should be enjoyable for the people making it as well as the audience, as he recalled in the 2021 interview. He wanted to earn a living that way. Years later, writing College Fund, he was trying to explain that life to his son before they had met.
“I want him to know I was trying my best to be a good guy and a good dad, while still trying to follow my dreams. I hope he feels he can do those things too.”
He has one more hope for the song: “And hopefully he likes the song. That would be pretty cool.”
Listen to College Fund on Of Absolute Importance, explore Hudsy’s music on Bandcamp, or visit his official website.